AIR DEFENCE REAWAKENS

There is renewed urgency to provide air defence systems that not only work in isolation, but can be networked for ground protection in depth.

- Stephen W. Miller

Tactical air defence has been widely neglected by many armies with notable exceptions. This is at least partly the result of the focus on counter-insurgency (COIN) but also is reflected by the many decades of air superiority achieved by western militaries in conflicts since World War II. It is not surprising then that Russia and the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), the nations against which this superiority might be directed, would be the ones paying the most attention to advancing air defence capabilities. Assuring the protection of manoeuvring forward combat units, supporting indirect fire assets, and logistics trains and sites is of critical importance when one is not assured of air cover. This has been complicated by the additional threats of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and cruise missiles.

Peter Wilson and John Parachini senior international defence researchers at the RAND Corporation in a 6 May 2000 article entitled Russian S-400 Surfaceto-Air Missile System: Is It Worth the Sticker Price? explained that “the capability of an individual system is not the central point. To be effective the systems need to be deployed within a larger integrated air and missile defence system.” This is equally true at the tactical level to cover a dynamic manoeuvring force and its supporting elements at fixed sites behind the front lines. The introduction of low level UAS systems, in particular, has expanded the need for this networking to cover other ground combat elements as well and requires a resiliency with a mutually supporting network established in depth.

Tactical Air Defence